After Joe Nathan scuffled badly the last several outings and blew the save in Satruday’s game, Ron Gardenhire has made the decision to give the ball to Matt Capps in the ninth inning and let Nathan pitch in some less stressful situation. Gardy has said he won’t use Nathan as a setup man at this point either, creating another whole the Twins need to fill. It even sounds like there is going to be a move made in an attempt to fix the bullpen.
The news just keeps getting worse for this team. Joe Mauer hitting the DL started off a bad weekend of news and now Nathan being demoted to a lesser role is just adding insult to injury at this point. Twins’ fans should have been prepared for Nathan’s struggles, though. We all should have kept our expectations low since the guy did miss an entire season. It should be good for Nathan to get some stress free outs and build some confidence. I am still pretty worried about his future this season, though, and I don’t know if we can count on him in 2011. And that is a very bad thing, because the bullpen needs him.
Everything I have heard is that control is something that takes the longest to come back to guys after Tommy John surgery. Nathan showed that Saturday when he walked two batters after giving up the game-tying homer to Ben Zobrist. It is imperative for Nathan to find himself soon for this team to compete. The bullpen is in shambles and I really don’t trust the combination of arms out there to get outs in the eighth inning. Glen Perkins got the call in the eighth Sunday and he started off okay until he gave up a hit and a walk, putting himself into a pretty sticky situation that he was bailed out of by a pretty nice play at short by Casilla.
So for now, it appears Gardy is going to have to piece things together late in games. At least the starters the last few nights have looked good. If the entire staff could get on the same page it would be pretty nice. This is a pretty big week for the Twins, Francisco Liriano is taking the hill again Monday. If he implodes again I am officially out of excuses for him and the Twins are in big trouble. Let’s hope the bullpen isn’t going to be asked to clean up his mess tomorrow.
Original Story:
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